After about two weeks of good-eating, Evan is not eating well again in the past week. It is because he had a slight cold again, more teeth coming in, other reasons? As with many things baby, we'll probably never know the answers. What is clear is that if we tried to pressure him to eat, he will do the opposite and eat even less. So we're learning how to step back and let him control how much he eats. Forcing just makes things worse, so whynot try something that lessens the pressure on both sides? Evan has shown over and over that he can regulate his own actions generally to a positive conclusion, so we need to trust him in eating as we've trusted him in other matters.
In the last few days he has shown an intense interest to learn how to use a spoon. He would grab a spoon if it came close to his fingers and if it was on the table but out of his reach, he would ask for it "sou-zi" (spoon in chinese). Instead of fighting him for the spoon, we started giving it to him and letting him try to get the good into the spoon. For a few days he was quite uncoordinated and couldn't even hold the spoon right side up. But today, he made tremendous progress. Not only is he holding the spoon steadily, he's able to pick up some food, and furthermore, he's now also able to put some of that food into his mouth! It didn't seem to take more than a half-dozen practice sessions for him to get this far. He's still not able to eat on his own with a spoon yet but he's definitely on his way. Now, if he would only chew and swallow the food he puts in his mouth :)
We went to Shoreline Park today and played at the ship playground, mostly in the sand pits. He learned that he could climb down a fairly big step if he trusted his feet instead of insisting that he feel the ground first. We have to let him explore and try on his own much more than we have been.
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